Women earned on average 16% less than men in the EU in 2014

Women earned on average 16% less than men in the EU in 2014. Estonia had the highest gap at 28%, Germany was third highest at 22% while there was no data for Ireland and Greece.

Ireland's gap was 14.4% in 2012 up from 12.6% in 2008 — likely reflecting a jump in part-time work by women during the recession.

Eurostat reported that the gender pay gap varied by almost 1 to 10 across the EU member states. It was less than 10% in Slovenia (2.9%), Malta (4.5%), Italy (6.5%), Poland (7.7%), Luxembourg (8.6%) as well as Belgium (9.9%). At the opposite end of the scale, the gender pay gap was over 20% in Estonia (28.3%), Austria (22.9%), the Czech Republic (22.1%), Germany (21.6%) and Slovakia (21.1%).

The data was issued Monday in advance of International Women’s Day today.

The statistics office says that differences between women and men in the labour market do not only concern wage discrepancies, but also and along with it, the type of contract held.

In 2014, while 1 in 5 women in the EU (20.0%) aged 25-49 and without children were working part-time, this concerned 1 in 12 men (8.2%). And the gap widens with the number of children: almost half of women (45.1%) with at least three children were working part-time, compared with 7.0% for men in the same situation.

Eurostat: Did you know?

1) that inLatviathere are 118 women per 100 men, the highest ratio in the EU, while there are slightly fewer women than men inLuxembourg(99.8 women per 100 men)?

2) that in the EU, 27% of women aged 18-74 have completed tertiary education, compared with 25% of men. The share of women exceeds that of men in all Member States except Germany (where the difference between men (27.9%) and women (20.3%) is the highest),Luxembourg, Austria, the Netherlands and Greece.

3) that within theEU, women in Spain have the highest life expectancy at birth (86.1 years) and women in Bulgaria (78.6 years) andRomania(78.7 years) the lowest?

4) that female employment in the EUhas grown by more than 4 percentage points over the last 10 years (from 59.2% to 63.4%), and that in 2014 it was the highest in Sweden (77.6%) and the lowest in Greece (44.3%)?

5) that the share of women having a part-time job in the Netherlands (75.2%) was more than twenty-five times higher than in Bulgaria (2.7%)?

6) that the average number of hours worked for full-time employed in the EU is higher for men (42.4 hours) than for women (40.0 hours)? The average number of hours of work for women is highest inGreece(41.9 hours) and lowest in DenmarkandIreland (both 37.7 hours).

7) that in theEU, the gender pay gap, meaning the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of male and female paid employees as a percentage of the value for male employees, is the largest in Estonia(28.3%) and the smallest in Slovenia (2.9%) andMalta (4.5%)?